Rather Feel Pain
by Zchocolatebunniesrulezworld
Summary: As the bed creaks in the rhythm of their rocking, Koya wonders how she could ever go on without the numb torture they call "making love".


**Be careful: lesbian torture-porn coming up. It's not really explicit, but just in case, this is rated M. If you're squicked by this kind of thing, then what the heck are you lurking around in the Loveless fandom for? It's your own fault, duckling.**

**_o~o_  
**

There is no pleasure without pain.

Koya imagines, for a moment, a life without an ounce of tragedy. If she had grown up loved by her parents, supported and carefully shielded from the horrors of battle, if nobody close to her died, if she had a religion to turn to and all the creature comforts in the world...would she be happy? Would a constant current of bliss run through her veins? Of course not. She would never be able to fully appreciate all the good in her life, without any horror to hold it against. If tears never poured down her face in seemingly never-ending sobs, how could she know what a precious gift it is to laugh?

Koya realizes how little a comfort this idea can pose to someone who has just lost, for instance, their lover. However, this is the only truth she holds. Maybe because she can only see this issue from an objective standpoint. After all, she has experienced neither pleasure nor pain. Nagisa made sure of this. Oh, the witch thought she had been protecting her precious Zeroes, thought she was rendering them invincible, but no. All she could accomplish was numbness.

Koya wonders vaguely what it really means to "feel". She has tried to before—out of curiosity, she'd drag a razor slowly along the inside of her arm, or hold her feet inside her fireplace until the skin bubbled in oozing blisters, making her unable to walk for months afterwards—but still, nothing. She can register that something is touching her, but the actual sensation is lost.

It's not that big of an issue to her, though. Because she is held apart from physical corruption, her mind is as crystal-clear as glass. Her emotions and ideas are unsullied by corporeal distractions, and petty things like hormones don't affect her at all.

This way, she knows her love for Yamato is real. Not that she has ever, even for a millisecond, doubted the fact.

Koya strokes the long blonde hair of her sacrifice, who is clinging to Koya as she sleeps. Yamato is not like her. She is devoured even in her sleep by a thick, cloying desire to feel. Yamato would give anything to sense the body's impurities

Her raw need manifests within those languid, moonlit hours they spend under the bedsheets. Yamato does not "make love" while her and Koya's bodies rock together in feelingless passion. She works, like a true sacrifice, to get Koya to feel something—anything—so that an echo of those feelings will be passed on to her.

Koya doesn't dread their nights together, even when Yamato's desperation manifests itself in horrifying ways. She can't, after all, feel what her sacrifice does to her. Yamato takes a sick pleasure in bending Koya's fingers so far back that they snap, one by one. During their lovemaking, she ravages Koya's body, leaving her marks for weeks to come. She digs her teeth into sensitive areas on the inside of Koya's thighs, piercing the skin and lapping up the blood that pours down her lover's legs. She'll drench Koya's chest in boiling water, pinching the subsequent blisters on her breasts until they burst. She traces whorls into Koya's back with a sharp knife, etching random patterns and words into her skin.

And finally, once she has had her fill of "pain", Yamato will try to bring about pleasure. She will plunge down into Koya, with fingers or tongue or toys for the kind of games they play, and try to tear the sensation out of her. Koya's body responds. She pours into Yamato, her back arches, her hips thrust further into Yamato's touch, tears leak from her eyes—and she feels nothing. These are natural physical reactions, but somewhere on the path from body to mind, the connection is severed. She lies back, candlelight throwing her heaving chest into rippling shadows, and shakes her head.

So Yamato reverts back to torture, sickening acts that cause Koya to shudder unwittingly whenever she recalls them. In a few hours, the sunrise illuminates Koya's bruised, bleeding, lashed body, hands often tied to the bedstand with barbed wire.

Her face is impassive while Yamato, naked before her, is doubled over and sobbing.

Though some may jump to conclusions, it is not abuse. Koya can't feel a thing, and if she were to ask Yamato to stop (not that she ever _has_, or ever _will_), she would cease at once, and draw Koya back into her loving embrace. Her actions are simply a child's way of crying out to the world that she wants to be like everybody else.

That must be why her tattoo, the symbol binding the two of them together and keeping them cursed, is fading. Yamato tries to hide it, but Koya has rubbed off the concealing make-up in Yamato's sleep. Her sacrifice is subconsciously willing their separation.

Koya absently trails her fingers across her lover's breast, tracing her thumb over their sign—_zero_—now just a faint gray line. What will the two of them do without their bond? Assuming Nagisa even lets them live, how could they go on? Will Yamato pass into the realm of constant sensation while Koya stays trapped in the dark?

Suddenly, Koya wants to experience what Yamato surely is, too. She can't bear to be separated, in mind or body, from her ever-constant lover. Her life would be so, so empty without her.

So she will fight Soubi, their opposite, the man who can't run fast enough from his feelings. She will twist her words into daggers and watch as sharp florets of pain blossom across his chest. But she won't truly understand, and because of this, she won't win.

As to how Yamato will respond, well, Koya still needs to work that part out. Koya's sacrifice is terrified of hurting her or being a hindrance in any way, and Koya can't help but picture coming across Yamato's prostrated body one day, covered in blood...she twitches involuntarily at the image, and pulls Yamato closer.

However something inside her, a tiny voice she didn't know was there, whispers words of comfort. _It will work out in the end_, it says, _as long as you have her_.

Koya didn't know she could still feel hope.


End file.
